Senator John Thune has some reason to cry about venture capital’s preference for California, New York, and Massachusetts over South Dakota. A new report from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association shows that of the $1.06 trillion of venture capital activity tracked from 2006 through 2020, South Dakota attracted just $221 million, or 0.02%. We somehow attracted more than half of that fifteen-year total in 2019 alone—0.08% of the national total of $138 billion—but then in 2020, with Kristi Noem raising South Dakota’s “Open for Business” coronavirus-be-damned profile, the venture capital flow throttled back to a meager $19.3 million, or 0.01% of the national total.
What—all those Sturgis bikers spent all their money on beer and hookers and didn’t spread around some venture capital?
Coronavirus did not cause a national downturn in venture capital activity; PitchBook and NVCA report venture capital activity surged in the pandemic year by 13% over 2019. Neither did the pandemic change the skewed state distribution Thune was crying about: California, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas drew just over 80% of last year’s $156 billion in venture capital activity. Investors were apparently eager amidst the pandemic to tie their fortunes to new promising business ventures… and they found fewer signs of such promise in pandemic-ignorant and distractedly undermanaged South Dakota.
South Dakota ranked 46th nationwide for attracting venture capital in 2020. We at least beat Wyoming and North Dakota (they were 49th and 50th). We drew $2.9 million more in venture capital than far-off Alaska, which ranked 47th, and $4.9 million more than remote and under-infrastructured Puerto Rico, which ranked 48th (hmm… coasts aren’t helping those two places).
Nebraska ranked 36th with $105.5 million in new venture capital in 2020. Montana, with fewer people and more empty space, ranked 35th with $109.3 million. Iowa ranked 30th with $187.3 million.
And Minnesota—ah, coastal Minnesota, with its great international seaport of Duluth—ranked 12th with a record $1.817 billion in venture capital flowing into entrepreneurs’ accounts. That’s still only 1.16% of national venture capital activity in 2020, but in a contest where only twelve states claimed more than 1% of the take, that’s not bad. That also beats Minnesota’s recent historical take of 0.96% of national venture capital activity since 2006.
At a time when South Dakota’s Governor claimed that Minnesota was “choking the life out of their businesses,” investors were giving Minnesota businesses a Heimlich maneuver 94 times larger than the support they sent to South Dakota. Hmm… I guess all that government overreach South Dakota’s Governor accuses Minnesota of is just Minnesota’s more successful reach for venture capital in a highly competitive global market.
Money talks… and money says Minnesota is a better place to invest than South Dakota.
When a state has a 1 party system and knuckleheads in Pierre and Washington what is the expectation? Just because a person wins a rigged beauty contests or two and we keep sending followers and not leaders to Pierre and Washington, South Dakota will come out near the bottom as that is where the political people from the 1 party state know where to operate. In 2022 we can start balancing the political picture or stay at the bottom with Puerto Rico.
RST touches on an important point: our one-party system stymies economic development. Investors don’t want to go to one-horse towns. They want to go to markets where they have options, where they can count on competing interests to keep the market hopping and prevent any one dominant player from dictating how they do business. South Dakota’s one-party system facilitates too much pay to play, which may appeal to some fawners but doesn’t sell to real entrepreneurs who want to be their own boss and not depend on GOED handouts.
I believe there is a correlation here as to why SD struggles to keep college graduates when they complete their studies. These same venture capital opportunities are what many college students look toward for employment after graduation. Attempting to draw businesses here that are not bars and restaurants is critical to keeping the well-educated folks that our fine universities and tech schools produce. They are a large part of the future of SD.
BLM’s activity at strategically advantageous regions of opportunity zones is dubious and well-known. What would appear to be a very serious crime (RICO, Fraud) is being completed before our eyes as media is failing to control alternative information distribution platforms. Hypotheses were made that there would be insurance payouts and strategic reinvestment in these regions of MN, which saw small American businesses decimated violently and by ham fisted reactionary government policy where huge multinational corporations want to build their automated megacities.
The violence I witnessed in the context of the evidence I was presented through multiple disparate sources was strategic, directed, Brown-shirt fascistic violence meant to create civil war.
The False Flag model we saw the capitol, and we could very well see shortly again leading-up to Biden’s team’s attempted capture of the 2nd Amendment, is meant to get black people to hate whites (especially) and vice versa. Then, the fight’s instigators sit back and watch.
BLM and Antifa were both infiltrated by the same deep state that did JFK, 9/11, and COVID. They are pretty bad people, actually .. they take movements like this, weaponize them, and send them into their enemies. Same thing happens in South/Central America with the migrants, who face legitimate problems that we could solve there with and for them. There are some very, very, very, very bad people in South Central America who are not native to there.
So keep your family close, grow good local food, and find ways to do transactions that don’t require currency.
Skin color means nothing. There is no race.
There are only good hearts .. and dark hearts.
That is all.
Mr. Dale, only you and your apologist MAGA fellow cultist could watch an actual act of your side engaging in civil war and come to the conclusion that is proof (proof?) of the OTHER side deep plotting the seeds of civil war.
Unfortunately for you and your ilk of other weak-minded followers, your Second Amendment fear mongering is not true now, has not ever been true. Clinton did not “come for our guns.” Obama did not “come for our guns.” Biden is not “coming for our guns.” Instead the nation of senseless deaths caused by the reckless obsession with gun ownership and use devastates this nation UNIQUELY.
You sir, support hate and death. Every comment you make must be weighed in that context.
Good to see John Dale just making truckloads of claims without providing any evidence, as usual.
John Dale, a cry for help. Take your meds boy.
Apparently, Mr. Dale is a compadre, if only in thought, of Marjorie Taylor Greene (false flag, my foot) and QAnon. She, and all things QAnon, need to be terminated as participants in government. The right to keep and bear arms will remain, but must, in modern times, be “well-regulated”.
And QAnon, Oathkeepers and their ilk are the bad people who have infiltrated our modern-day culture and are the groups we should be paranoid about, because they mean the end of our democracy. Thune and Rounds and Johnson are aware, but will not vote to censure or remove any such lunatics. Modern-day Republicans, no matter their stature in Congress, will vote only to preserve party.
Lewandowski is looking for work now that he got the boot from the Pentagon. He and the gnome can work on some vulture capitalism like we are used to. We’ve exploited the Natives, the Chinese, the Koreans, then back to the Native children, so corrupt republicans need some new blood…. Gotta be the kids again, all of them this time.
Darn right MN is a more popular place to invest in business than SD. Year after year, statistics show that more businesses prefer to move here than anti-gay, anti-living wage SD. You have your blue blood trusts parked there, SD, and that’s about it. The Cities being known populary known as the San Francisco of the North helps also.
John Dale, if I recall, there was maybe one person killed during the Minneapolis Riots. There were five killed during the Republican whackjob riots in DC. There was one street in Minneapolis that had a few businesses burned down, it wasn’t the whole city like Fox News would like you to believe. The far far majority of protesters across the country were peaceful. The Media likes to play it up, come on pubs, practice what you preach about fake news.